Home » Category archives: 'Editorial' (Page 4)
In the years immediately following Hogg’s death late in 1835, the Glasgow firm of Blackie & Son brought out two collected sets of his writing, Tales and Sketches by the Ettrick Shepherd, in six volumes, … Continue reading
In ‘Bibliomania: Book Collecting, Cultural Politics, and the Rise of Literary Heritage in Romantic Britain’, [1] Philip Connell argues that the decade of the 1810s saw the rise of diverse strains of bibliomania involving the … Continue reading
For over a decade after its firts edition in 1828, Charles Heath’s Keepsake stood out as the most elegant of the English annuals, its binding and engraving setting the high standard by which other giftbooks … Continue reading
From 1837 to 1854, Henry Reed, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, served as William Wordsworth’s editor in America, and with Wordsworth’s approbation did much to promote the poet’s trans-Atlantic … Continue reading
‘Extempore Effusion’ declares itself a poem ‘Upon the Death of James Hogg,’ but the Ettrick Shepherd is mentioned in only three of the forty-four lines of the poem. Viewed as evidence of a biographical kind … Continue reading
Thomas Hood’s versatile career spans the years from the early 1820s until he died of consumption and overwork in March 1845. At various stages, he worked as engraver and illustrator, reviewer, editor, publisher, playwright, novelist, … Continue reading
Amidst all the judgements passed on them, nobody has ever claimed that, in their original board bindings, Minerva Press novels were aesthetically appealing and distinctive in appearance. [1] But, for a few years at least, … Continue reading
Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bed-side, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in … Continue reading
While eighteenth-century definitions of satire portray it is as a masculine discourse, a survey of Romantic-period titles shows that women writers wrote narrative satire in numbers nearly equal to those of male satirical novelists. [1] … Continue reading
The early decades of the nineteenth century are coming to be recognised as a peculiarly uncertain time, socially, culturally, and artistically. London is centrally important to this understanding: the rapidly expanding metropolis, bigger than any … Continue reading
Introduction Online Identities, the Information Highway, Information Overload are just a sample of terms coined in the twentieth century in order to embody the effects of the communication processes of digital media. [1] For many … Continue reading
I I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience. [1] With her signature knowingness and wit, … Continue reading
In a letter dated 12 November 1824, Thomas Campbell writes of his delight that The Pleasures of Hope would be translated into French: ‘I shall be much flattered to see myself in French Costume.’ [2] … Continue reading
According to Lee Erickson, in a recent essay, Walter Scott’s refusal of the poet laureateship in 1813 and the publication of his first novel, Waverley, a year later were sure signs of ‘a coming shift … Continue reading
I Biography with Reference to ‘A Ker-ish Trick’ and ‘The Heiress di Montalde’ As a descendant of Anne Ker, I have researched her family history including her novel The Heiress di Montalde (1799) and her … Continue reading
When in 1801 an anonymous Dutch author published a novel called Dolozetta, of de belaagde deugd (Dolozetta, or Virtue Beset ), he, or she, proclaimed on its title page that the book had not been … Continue reading
In his essay ‘The English Novel in the Romantic Era’, Peter Garside introduces the obscure and remarkably prolific figure of Mrs Meeke in the following terms: Mary Meeke is almost as productive [as Scott] with … Continue reading
Conventional studies of the short fictional form, whilst acknowledging the existence of the genre in the early nineteenth century, have nevertheless viewed that period as one of relative infertility. Ian Reid, for example, despite arguing … Continue reading
I The following checklist provides bibliographical details of 217 gothic bluebooks scattered throughout twenty-one national, academic, and private libraries in the British Isles, North America, and Germany (Fürstliche Bibliothek Corvey, North Rhine Westphalia). In its … Continue reading
I English novelist Anne Ker (Phillips) was born in 1766 and published several works of popular fiction between the years of 1799 and 1817. [1] She was a commercial writer whose desire to sell aligns … Continue reading
I In a letter to the poetess Anna Seward on 30 November 1802, Walter Scott surveyed the various methods of publication open to a budding author, including one that was definitely not suited to himself: … Continue reading
I The 1810s, 20s, and 30s were transitional decades for Britain. These years saw the dislocation of Romantic, revolutionary energies and the onset of a more stable Victorian society. Whilst early-nineteenth-century fiction participated in this … Continue reading
I The Cork writer Edward Walsh was born in Derry in 1805: at the time of his birth, Walsh’s father belonged to the North Cork Militia and was posted in Ireland. However, Walsh was reared … Continue reading
Mary Julia Young was a prolific author of fiction and poetry between 1791 and 1810. Although she was listed as one of the ‘Mothers of the Novel’ in Dale Spender’s 100 Good Women Writers Before … Continue reading
The inspirational potential of Italian literature for British Romantic authors has been investigated in studies such as Peter Vassallo’s discussions of Byron and Shelley or Ralph Pite’s The Circle of our Vision: Dante’s Presence in … Continue reading
On 14 September 1814, Samuel Rogers came upon a stone tablet in Geneva marking the birthplace of Rousseau and close by another for Charles Bonnet (1720–93), the Swiss naturalist. ‘No such things with us’, Rogers … Continue reading
The argument of this book is that Wordsworth’s later poetry focuses less upon nature and the poet’s inner self, more upon the visible external world, the visual arts and the visual appearance of his own … Continue reading
This book uses Nietzsche’s writings to explore the treatment of the self as a fictional construct in the work of Keats and Shelley and, in turn, argues that both poets anticipate Nietzschean theories of subjectivity, … Continue reading
This collection of essays, which takes as its unifying theme the cultural traffic between Romanticism and Victorianism, is a recent addition to Ashgate’s The Nineteenth Century, a series which in itself challenges established patterns of … Continue reading
The aim of Ashgate’s Nineteenth Century Series ‘is to reflect, develop and extend the great burgeoning interest in the nineteenth century […] as a locus for our understanding not only of the past but of … Continue reading
In Thomas Flanagan’s novel, The Year of the French (London, 1980), a young Maria Edgeworth passes close to the scene of a recent massacre of Irish rebels. Unable to see the slaughtered bodies of the … Continue reading
Romanticism’s Debatable Lands is a collection of essays that originated in papers delivered at the British Association of Romanticism Studies’s 2005 conference on the same theme. In its introduction, the book’s editors (also the conference’s … Continue reading
Gillian Hughes is a General Editor of EUP’s Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg. Among other works by Hogg, she has edited Altrive Tales (2003) and the three-volume Collected Letters … Continue reading
This book is an important addition to Ashgate’s Nineteenth Century series, containing critical and theoretical discussion of Romanticism and its relationship with Religion. The editors, Gavin Hopps and Jane Stabler, state at the outset their … Continue reading
The long-awaited EUP paperback reprint of James Hogg’s A Queer Book has finally arrived after its 1995 debut, as part of the larger StirlingSouth Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg . … Continue reading
This wide-sweeping study succeeds in broadening our perception of the Gothic as a literary movement in the early nineteenth century, even at a time when it might seem that claims for the mode’s predominance have … Continue reading
Dino Francis Felluga’s well argued and thoroughly researched study explores the reception history of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, and connects their popular critical reception in the nineteenth century to the ultimate dismissal of … Continue reading
David Higgins’s readable and well-researched study contributes to the project of resituating key concepts of Romantic poetics within the print culture of the period. He brings together the period’s unprecedented interest in ‘genius’, which has … Continue reading
This informative and often densely argued work brings together three main components in exploring a range of texts spanning Samuel Johnson’s Life of Savage (1744) to Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), with a … Continue reading
Michael Eberle-Sinatra’s highly accessible study is a worthy contribution to the recent rise of interest in the work of Leigh Hunt. Focusing on 1805–1828, the study aims to regain a sense of Hunt as a … Continue reading
Didactic writing seldom sets the modern pulse racing, and it is a brave critic who sets out to concentrate on literature which explicitly aims to improve the morals of its readers. From a historical distance, … Continue reading
This fascinating exploration by Hermione de Almeida and George H. Gilpin continues a strong series of studies, ‘British Art and Visual Culture since 1750: New Readings’, which attempts to unpack the social history, consumption, and … Continue reading
Visiting Sir Walter Scott at J. G. Lockhart’s house in London just before Scott’sfinal voyage to Malta and Italy in 1831, the Irish poet Thomas Moore reflected sadly in his journal on Scott’s series of … Continue reading
Richard Hill looks into the gift-books and annual culture of the 1820s and ’30s, noting a ‘power-struggle in the publishing arena’ that emerged as a result of ‘production practices and technological developments that challenged traditional modes of book production’. By focusing on the interactions between two major Edinburgh authors, James Hogg and Walter Scott, Hill argues that in the late 1820s a fundamental shift was precipitated in the role of the author in the production of popular literature. Continue reading
Peveril of the Peak has never been regarded as one of Walter Scott’s greatest novels and its relative failure to achieve critical success is often attributed to the ‘over-production and money-spinning’ that many see as characteristic … Continue reading
Let’s begin with an irritated Elizabeth Inchbald. At the bidding of prolific and insistent publisher Thomas Norton Longman, she undertook the task of collecting and critiquing a series of plays spanning the two centuries between … Continue reading
The final chapter of Humphrey Repton’s collected works on landscape gardening and architecture, published after his death in 1840, concludes with an encomium to Repton’s work from an unnamed source. ‘[What can bestow pure tranquillity?] … Continue reading
This report, like its predecessors, relates primarily to the second volume of The English Novel, 1770–1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction published in the British Isles (Oxford: OUP, 2000), co-edited by Peter Garside and … Continue reading
Sir Anthony Carlisle FRS, FRCS (1768–1840), a nineteenth-century surgeon, is an unlikely person to emerge in a discussion on English Literature, but recent research for a proposed biography has produced evidence for Carlisle as the … Continue reading
